Colonial Trade Routes and Goods (2024)

FAQs

What were the colonial trade routes and goods? ›

The colonial economy depended on international trade. American ships carried products such as lumber, tobacco, rice, and dried fish to Britain. In turn, the mother country sent textiles, and manufactured goods back to America.

Establishing colonies promoted mercantilist goals in two ways: first, the colonies ensured the mother country had a cheap supply of raw materials (timber, sugar, tobacco, furs, just to name a few), and second, the colonies served as a captive market for finished goods (furniture, guns, metal implements).

An example of the colonial trade routes sequence was: New England colonies sent rum and other goods to Africa or Europe. Enslaved Africans were sent to work the sugar plantations in North America, which brought molasses to America to make the rum and other goods.

England's rise to power during the late 1600s was due largely to the production of tobacco in Virginia and sugar in the West Indies. As time passed, though, the North American colonies began trading with the West Indies directly, supplying the colonials with horses, food, lumber, and agricultural products.

The trade routes served principally to transfer raw materials, foodstuffs, and luxury goods from areas with surpluses to others where they were in short supply.

Gold and salt were the main items traded. The gold mines of West Africa provided great wealth to empires such as Ghana and Mali. Other commonly traded items were ivory, kola nuts, cloth, slaves, metal goods, and beads.

The world's second-largest continent, much of the value of Africa's exports are concentrated in natural resources like petroleum, gold, diamonds, natural gas, and coal. Agricultural commodities like tea, coffee, and cotton also find large markets overseas.

The West Africans exchanged their local products like gold, ivory, salt and cloth, for North African goods such as horses, books, swords and chain mail. This trade (called the trans-Saharan trade because it crossed the Sahara desert) also included slaves.

Five commodities accounted for over 60 percent of the total value of the mainland colonies' exports: Tobacco, bread and flour, rice, dried fish, and indigo. Tobacco was by far the highest-valued due to the duties assessed on it on export from America and import into Britain.

The fur trade reshaped American Indian life, however. Indians acquired brass kettles, axes, hatches, farm implements, and metal fishing hooks that altered the way they lived. Firearms changed the way they hunted and the way they went to war with each other and with Europeans.

What currency did the 13 colonies use? ›

Cash in the Colonies was denominated in pounds, shillings, and pence. The value of each denomination varied from Colony to Colony; a Massachusetts pound, for example, was not equivalent to a Pennsylvania pound. All colonial pounds were of less value than the British pound sterling.

Lumber, wool, iron, cotton, tobacco, rice, and indigo were among the products needed in England. British manufacturers in the meantime needed markets for the goods they produced. The American colonies bought their cloth, furniture, knives, guns, and kitchen utensils from England.

Weavers transform flax, cotton, and wool into precise fabrics; milliners create fine accessories; tailors measure and fit clothing for folks throughout the city; leather breeches makers create leather breeches for men and boys; shoemakers make footwear by hand; and wigmakers fashion statement-making headpieces.

In the period circa 1200–1450, commerce along exchange networks such as the Silk Roads, the Indian Ocean, and the trans-Saharan networks involved a number of new economic and commercial practices.

The Silk Road was one of the first trade routes to join the Eastern and the Western worlds. According to Vadime Elisseeff (2000): "Along the Silk Roads, technology traveled, ideas were exchanged, and friendship and understanding between East and West were experienced for the first time on a large scale.